Films

Oscar Winning Director Volker Schlöndorff’s DIPLOMACY Sets US Release Dates

Volker Schlöndorff’s DIPLOMACY, starring “two of France’s greatest actors,” Niels Arestrup and André Dussollier, will open at the Film Forum in New York on Wednesday, October 15, and at the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles on November 7. A national release will follow.

As the Allies march toward Paris in the summer of 1944, Hitler gives orders that the French capital should not fall into enemy hands, or if it does, then ‘only as a field of rubble’. The person assigned to carry out this barbaric act is Wehrmacht commander of Greater Paris, General Dietrich von Choltitz, who already has mines planted on the Eiffel Tower, in the Louvre and Notre Dame and on the bridges over the Seine. Nothing should be left as a reminder of the city’s former glory. However, at dawn on 25 August, Swedish Consul General Raoul Nordling steals into German headquarters through a secret underground tunnel and there starts a tension-filled game of cat and mouse as Nordling tries to persuade Choltitz to abandon his plan .

In this riveting adaptation of the stage success by Cyril Gély, the great Volker Schlöndorff (Academy Award winner THE TIN DRUM) has created a psychologically elaborate game of political manners between two highly contrasting characters. While Choltitz entrenches himself behind his duty to obey unquestioningly all military orders, Nordling tries everything he can to appeal to reason and humanity and prevent the senseless destruction of the beloved ‘City of Light.’

http://youtu.be/Y6y5DiGBQdQ

Photo credits: Niels Arestrup as General Dietrich von Choltitz and André Dussollier as Consul Raoul Nordling in DIPLOMACY. A film by Volker Schlöndorff. A Zeitgeist Films release.
Photo: Jérôme Prébois
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THE DECENT ONE, Documentary About Heinrich Himmler, Sets 2014 Fall Release Dates

THE DECENT ONE, a documentary that reveals the secret personal writings and photographs from the private life of Nazi SS Commander Heinrich Himmler, simultaneously providing a remarkably authentic account of the reality of Nazi Germany, will be released this Fall by Kino Lorber.. Winner of the Best Documentary award at the 2014 Jerusalem Film Festival, THE DECENT ONE premiered at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, and will open at Laemmle Theaters in Los Angeles on October 10 and at Film Forum in New York on October 1. A national release will follow.

A recently discovered cache of hundreds of personal letters, diaries and photos belonging to the Nazi Gestapo chief seems to reveal a thoughtful, loving husband and devoted father to his daughter. The documents first found in the Himmler’s family house in 1945 were hidden in Tel Aviv for decades and sold to the father of the Israeli documentary filmmaker, Vanessa Lapa. Through readings of Himmler’s and his family’s most personal writings and rarely seen restored film footage from key German archives, Lapa has fashioned a fascinating case study: a portrait of the man responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the Second World War, who thought of himself in heroic terms.

On Hitler’s behalf, Himmler formed the country death squads, masterminded its concentration camps and built Nazi Germany’s extermination camps. As the facilitator and overseer of these camps, Himmler directed the killing of some 6 million Jews, between 200,000 and 500,000 Romani people, and an untold number of other victims including homosexuals, Communists, as well as Polish and Soviet citizens.

Psychologists, historians and moralists have long debated how seemingly ordinarily people can do monstrous things. The jaw-dropping discrepancies Lapa discovers between Himmler’s self-image and his historical role casts a new, piercing light on the human capacity for self-delusion and the very nature of evil.

http://youtu.be/XuqgHir41gk
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Trailer + Release Dates Announced for Dan Harmon Doc HARMONTOWN

The trailer has been released for Neil Berkeley’s HARMONTOWN, a documentary chronicling Dan Harmon’s podcast tour following his firing from his cult-like creation, NBC’s “Community.” Featuring appearances from Jack Black, Ben Stiller, Sarah Silverman, Jason Sudeikis, and Joel McHale, among others, HARMONTOWN provides untapped insight to Harmon’s personal demons and his ever-present talent that is poised to redeem him. HARMONTOWN will be released by The Orchard on October 3rd in LA and on VOD and on October 10th in NYC.

http://youtu.be/KisiU9b_2EU

A kindred spirit to nerds everywhere, writer-comedian Dan Harmon has achieved celebrity via the hit series “Community,” but cut his teeth writing for shows such as “The Sarah Silverman Program” and the Jack Black/Ben Stiller pilot “Heat Vision and Jack.” After being fired from his signature creation, Harmon hits the road with his popular podcast and performs live for his cult-like fan base across the country. Known for his wit, cynicism, and disarming vulnerability, HARMONTOWN finds Harmon bathed in the adoration of his fans as he confronts his personal demons and comes out on the other side.

From acclaimed filmmaker Neil Berkeley (BEAUTY IS EMBARRASSING), and featuring past and present collaborators Sarah Silverman, Jack Black, Allison Brie, Joel McHale and many more, HARMONTOWN tells Harmon’s story with unabashed candor — showing his highs, his lows, and everything in-between.
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Watch Trailer for “HEAR ME MOVE” First Ever Dance Film From South Africa

The first trailer has been released for Scottnes Smith’s Hear Me Move which premiered last month at South Africa’s Durban International Film Festival. Described as the first ever dance film from South Africa, Hear Me Move features energetic “sbujwa” and “pantsula” dance sequences, choreographed by the award-winning Paul Modjadji, that play out against the backdrop of a gritty urban Johannesburg seldom seen on the silver screen. Smith says, “We opted to focus on sbujwa and pantsula, our home grown urban street dances, because we wanted South Africans to see themselves and be proud of their contemporary culture.”

The film tells the story of Muzi (played by newcomer Nyaniso Dzedeze), a mild mannered accounting student at a Johannesburg college and the son of a legendary township pantsula dancer. When tragedy struck at a street dance and his father was murdered, young Muzi promised his mother to give up dancing. What Muzi doesn’t know is that his father’s death was not as everyone believed it to be. When his father’s former dance partner, Shoes, approaches Muzi to join his crew, “Sbujwa Nation”, Muzi has to choose between finding out the truth about his father’s death or disappointing his mother. What he doesn’t realize is that by joining “Sbujwa Nation”, he will make himself mortal enemies with Prince, the former leader of “Sbujwa Nation” and head of rival dance crew “Ambi$hN”.

The film features a host of well-loved South African actors such as S’thandiwe Kgoroge as Muzi’s mother, Makhaola Ndebele as Shoes and Lillian Dube as Muzi’s grandmother. Alfred Ntombela, Khanyi Mbau, Lorcia Cooper, Boity Thulo, Thembi Seete, Wandile Molebatsi, Amanda Du Pont and radio DJ Khutso Theledi also make cameo appearances.

http://youtu.be/tthPtlLSjvk
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Judy Irving’s Documentary “PELICAN DREAMS” Sets US Release Dates

PELICAN DREAMS, a documentary film by Judy Irving, the director of “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill” will open at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas and at the Angelika Film Center in New York, and at the Royal, Playhouse 7, and Town Center in Los Angeles on November 7. A national release will follow.

Sundance-and-Emmy-Award-winning filmmaker Judy Irving (with her first film since the widely acclaimed and loved “The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill”) follows a wayward California brown pelican from her “arrest” on the Golden Gate Bridge into care at a wildlife rehabilitation facility, and from there explores pelicans’ nesting grounds, Pacific coast migration, and survival challenges of these ancient birds, sometimes referred to as the flying dinosaurs.

The film is about wildness, and asks the following questions: how close can we get to a wild animal without taming or harming it? Why do we need wildness in our lives, and how can we protect it? PELICAN DREAMS, stars “Gigi” (for Golden Gate) and Morro (a backyard pelican with an injured wing).
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See 10 Images from Animated Feature Film ROCKS IN MY POCKETS

Check out 10 images from ROCKS IN MY POCKETS, the debut animated feature by Signe Baumane. In the animated gem ROCKS IN MY POCKETS Latvian-born artist and filmmaker Signe Baumane tells five fantastical tales based on the courageous women in her family and their battles with madness.

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Animated Feature Film ROCKS IN MY POCKETS Sets Release Date (Release Date UPDATE)

Zeitgeist Films will release ROCKS IN MY POCKETS, the debut animated feature by Signe Baumane. ROCKS IN MY POCKETS had its World Premiere at the 2014 Karlovy Vary Film Festival where it was the first animated feature ever to take part in the Karlovy Vary International Competition. The film will open at the IFC Center in New York on September 3rd, NOT 5th, and at Laemmle Theaters in Los Angeles on September 12. A national release will follow.

In the animated gem ROCKS IN MY POCKETS Latvian-born artist and filmmaker Signe Baumane tells five fantastical tales based on the courageous women in her family and their battles with madness. With boundless imagination and a twisted sense of humor, she has created daring stories of art, romance, marriage, nature, business, and Eastern European upheaval—all in the fight for her own sanity.

Employing a unique, beautifully textured combination of papier-mâché stop-motion and classic hand-drawn animation (with inspiration from Jan Svankmajer and Bill Plympton), Baumane has produced a poignant and often hilarious tale of mystery, mental health, redemption and survival.

http://youtu.be/gJcVnFripdc

Director’s statement:

The idea for ROCKS IN MY POCKETS came from my stream of consciousness. Like most people I think about a wide variety of things, some fantastical, some mundane, but my mind keeps coming back to thoughts of “ending it all” and the ways I could go about doing it. Why? Why do I think this way? And why I am still alive despite such thoughts? I find the fragility of our minds fascinating. Life is strange, unpredictable, sometimes absurd and I try to see the humor in it all.

While I was studying at Moscow State University, I got pregnant and married the father of my future child, a Russian artist. After my son was born, I started having dark obsessive thoughts. I sought council with a local psychiatrist to whom I confessed that, at 18, I had tried to commit suicide by taking an excessive amount of Dimedrol. I was immediately sent to a Soviet mental hospital and locked away for four months. The official diagnosis was schizophrenia, but this was downgraded to the “lesser” one of manic-depression after my parents bribed medical officials.

Despite the diagnosis, I returned to the university, graduated successfully, and started my career as an animator. It turned out that I was not the only one in my extended family having dark, obsessive thoughts. In fact, I had plenty of company. Unfortunately, not all of the sufferers were able to fend their demons off.

ROCKS IN MY POCKETS is dedicated to my family members who did not survive, and to my surviving family, who still live in the aftermath. The film is dedicated to the hope that we sustain in our darkest moments.
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FIFI HOWLS FROM HAPPINESS – a documentary about a gay Iranian artist – opens in NYC August 8; in LA August 15

Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh and Bahman Mohassess in FIFI HOWLS FROM HAPPINESS. Courtesy of Music Box Films

Music Box Films will release FIFI HOWLS FROM HAPPINESS, the award-winning documentary film by Mitra Farahani in the U.S. The film had its World premiere as the Official Selection at the 2013 Berlin International Film Festival and screened at numerous film festivals including New York, Telluride, and Seattle. FIFI HOWLS FROM HAPPINESS will open at the Lincoln Plaza in New York on August 8, and at Laemmle Theaters in Los Angeles on August 15. A national release will follow.

Mitra Farahani’s lyrical documentary explores the enigma of provocative artist Bahman Mohassess, the so-called “Persian Picasso,” whose acclaimed paintings and sculptures dominated pre-revolutionary Iran. Irreverent and uncompromising, a gay man in a hostile world, Mohassess had a conflicted relationship with his homeland—revered by elites in the art scene and praised as a national icon, only to be censored later by an oppressive regime. Known for his iconoclastic art as well as his scathing declarations, Mohasses abandoned the country over 30 years ago for a simple, secluded life in Italy.

Bahman Mohassess in FIFI HOWLS FROM HAPPINESS. Courtesy of Music Box Films

While the new Iranian government destroyed many of his works, Mohasses himself obliterated even more– in rage at man’s inhumanity to man, environmental destruction, and the futility of idealism. Ranging from tender to playful to haunting to grotesque, these unforgettable pieces were as mercurial as the man himself, a chain-smoking recluse with the mouth of a sailor and the soul of a poet, touched by a mischievous spark and as likely to lapse into a political rant as a burst of eccentric laughter.

Determined to interview Mohassess, fine artist/filmmaker Farahani discovers him living alone in a hotel room in Rome and begins to craft the perfect final biography, in his own words and on his terms. Along the way, the inimitable spirit of the man behind the image is laid bare—both painfully sensitive and crudely comical, “condemned to paint,” but unable to compel himself to leave anything behind as a legacy. When a pair of artist brothers and ardent fans of Mohassess commission him for an ambitious project, the elderly man is inspired with a renewed sense of purpose and returns to painting after decades of dormancy. A lasting tribute to an elusive artistic genius, FIFI HOWLS FROM HAPPINESS affirms the power of creative freedom, the right of the artist to create and to destroy, and above all, to have no regrets.

http://youtu.be/50Isgf9j9Dw
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Cancer Documentary SECOND OPINION: Laetrile at Sloan-Kettering – opens Aug. 29 in NYC; Sept. 5 in LA

SECOND OPINION: Laetrile at Sloan-Kettering, a documentary film by Eric Merola, will open at Cinema Village in NYC on August 29, and at Laemmle Music Hall in LA on September 5. A national release will follow. SECOND OPINION: Laetrile at Sloan-Kettering is the remarkable true story of a young science-writer at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, who risked everything by blowing the whistle on a massive cover-up involving a promising cancer therapy.

The War On Cancer, launched in the early 1970s, set the stage for a massive influx of new ideas in fighting the disease of cancer. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, America’s leading cancer research center at the time, was assigned the task of testing an unconventional therapy called “Laetrile” in an effort to curb the public’s “false hope” in the alleged “quack” therapy. Ralph W. Moss PhD, a young and eager science writer, was hired by Sloan-Kettering’s public relations department in 1974 to help brief the American public on the center’s contribution to the War On Cancer. One of his first assignments was to write a biography about Dr. Kanematsu Sugiura, one of the Center’s oldest and leading research scientists as well as the original co-inventor of chemotherapy.

While meeting with this iconic scientist to pen a biography on his 60-year career at Sloan-Kettering, Moss discovered that Sugiura had been studying this “quack remedy” in laboratory mice, and with unexpectedly positive results. Shocked and bewildered, Moss reported back to his superiors what he had discovered, only to be met with backlash and denial from Sloan-Kettering’s leaders on what their own leading scientist had found. Fueled by respect and admiration for Sugiura—Ralph W. Moss attempted to publicize the truth about Sugiura’s findings. And after all diplomatic approaches failed, Moss started living a double life, working as a loyal employee at Sloan-Kettering while also recruiting fellow employees to help anonymously leak this information to the American public— through a newly formed underground organization they called—“Second Opinion”.

http://youtu.be/GcCyawsaWZQ
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Matt Longmire’ Panhandler Doc CARDBOARD to Be Featured at Portland’s Northwest Film Center

CARDBOARD, the latest work by Seattle-based filmmaker Matt Longmire will get a well deserved screening at Portland Oregon’s Northwest Film Center on July 3rd. Director Matt Longmire will be in attendance to introduce his film.

Encountering panhandlers with their rumpled cardboard signs asking for help is an everyday occurrence in Seattle. Many are veterans, many have issues with mental illness, and most make between $10 and $60 a day. Longmire was inspired to interview many of them to understand the corrugated trails that led to these street corners. What is their background? How do they survive? Seattle’s mayor, Mike McGinn, who made the highly controversial decision to veto the city’s ban on panhandling, offers political context balanced with countless other outlooks from Seattle’s citizens. (89 mins.)

http://youtu.be/zDVprC9ET3U
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Documentary BOUND BY FLESH About Conjoined Twins Daisy and Violet Hilton Sets Release Dates

Sundance Selects will open the new documentary BOUND BY FLESH, about conjoined twin superstars Daisy and Violet Hilton theatrically in New York (IFC Center) and select theaters, VOD, and iTunes on June 27. The award-winning film was directed by Leslie Zemeckis (BEHIND THE BURLY Q).

American sideshows were in fairs, circuses and carnivals. There were acts such as glass blowers, musicians, and also the freaks. Most freaks just stood there while the audience wandered past. The Hilton sisters however were trained to put on a winning performance. They sang, they danced and played a variety of musical instruments. Once they quit the carnival world and started playing vaudeville houses they made tens of thousands of dollars, setting box office records. They were soon considered “the royalty of vaudeville,” but the exploited twins would see little of their fortunes after the money was pocketed by unscrupulous managers.

BOUND BY FLESH explores the American sideshow, its origins and its heyday when the Hilton sisters were on display for huge streams of crowds pouring into tents to get a glimpse of these gorgeous multi-talented sisters.

The film includes interviews with Ward Hall, known as the “King of the Sideshow.” He is the last of the sideshow promoters in the style of a P.T. Barnum.

In June, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Academy Award-winning director Bill Condon will stage a reimagining of the hit musical show SIDE SHOW about the famous sisters as they grow from circus attraction to famous stage performers.

AMC recently renewed its popular series FREAKSHOW.

BOUND BY FLESH is produced, directed and written by Leslie Zemeckis, produced by Jackie Levine and executive produced by Robert Zemeckis.

http://youtu.be/kVwhd-ORjSQ
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WATCH Trailer for Newly Restored Documentary STATIONS OF THE ELEVATED

The trailer is released for the newly restored documentary Stations Of The Elevated. Stations Of The Elevated premiered at the 1981 New York Film Festival, but lacking appropriate music licenses, was never theatrically released in the United States. In the 30 years since its completion it has been rarely screened, developing a cult amongst cinephiles and jazz and graffiti lovers. After two years of working to secure appropriate licenses for its soundtrack, APD’s Cinema Conservancy program will finally make this crucial cultural document and cinematic experience available to the public in 2014 with a theatrical run.

Preceeding the theatrical run, APD/Cinema Conservancy’s new restoration of Stations Of The Elevated will premiere on Friday, June 27 as part of BAMcinemaFest on the Steinberg Screen at the BAM Harvey Theater. The event begins with a live performance by legendary jazz ensemble the Mingus Dynasty, the original Charles Mingus legacy band. The first band Sue Mingus organized after Charles’ death in 1979, this acclaimed orchestra continues to interpret Charles Mingus’ more than 300 compositions, and will perform as a prelude to Kirchheimer’s jazz-inflected documentary.

STATIONS is a 45-minute city symphony directed, produced and edited by Manfred Kirchheimer. Shot on lush 16mm color reversal stock, the film weaves together vivid images of graffiti-covered elevated subway trains crisscrossing the gritty urban landscape of 1970s New York, to a commentary-free soundtrack that combines ambient city noise with jazz and gospel by Charles Mingus and Aretha Franklin. Gliding through the South Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan – making a rural detour past a correctional facility upstate – STATIONS is an impressionistic portrait of and tribute to a New York that has long since disappeared.

The first-ever documentations of graffiti on film, STATIONS captures the height of the 1970s graffiti movement in New York, featuring the work of early legends including Lee, Fab 5 Freddy, Shadow, Daze, Kase, Butch, Blade, Slave, 12 T2B, Ree, and Pusher. Juxtaposing the colorful imagery of ‘tagged’ cars with shots of carefully hand-painted billboards depicting hamburgers and bikini-clad women, STATIONS forces audiences to ask: “What is urban art, and what role does it play in the daily life of a city?”

http://youtu.be/J0iqF6A4vRI
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